Cloning

Avoid the Cloning Blues This Season

Posted on by Michele Arduengo

I was blasting a holiday music playlist while driving recently, and Presley’s Blue Christmas played. I couldn’t get the phrase “Christmas Cloning Blues” out of my mind, and by the time I arrived at my destination, this happened:

Cloning Blues Christmas

(to the tune of Blue Christmas by Elvis Presley)

Blue and white colonies on a selective plate. Careful planning can help you avoid the cloning blues
Blue/White cloning is a standard technique in molecular biology labs.

I’ll have a blue Christmas without you

Colonies so blue, insert without you

Incubating my plates at 37 degrees

Won’t be the same if you’re not in lacZ

And all those blue colonies are forming

When my lab mates’ clonings are performing

They’ll be doing alright,

With their plates all filled with white

But I’ll have a blue, blue, blue cloning

Continue reading “Avoid the Cloning Blues This Season”

Cloning Blunt-Ended DNA Fragments is Hard: pGEM®-T Vectors Can Make It Easier.

Posted on by Leah Cronan

PCR amplification with a proofreading polymerase, like Pfu DNA polymerase, will leave you with a blunt end. However, another thermostable DNA polymerase, like Taq DNA Polymerase, adds a single nucleotide base to the 3’ end of the DNA fragment, usually an adenine, creating an “A” overhang. This “A” overhang can create difficulties when cloning the fragment is your end goal. You might consider creating a blunt end with Klenow or adding restriction sites to the ends of your PCR fragment by designing them in your primers. But why go through all those extra steps, when that “A” overhang allows efficient cloning of these fragments into T-Vectors such as the pGEM®-T Vectors? Fewer steps? Who can argue with that?

Continue reading “Cloning Blunt-Ended DNA Fragments is Hard: pGEM®-T Vectors Can Make It Easier.”

T-Vector Cloning: Questions, Answers and Tips

Posted on by Leah Cronan
Blue/White colony screening helps you pick only the colonies that have your insert.

Q: Can PCR products generated with GoTaq DNA Polymerase be used to for T- vector cloning?

A: Yes. GoTaq® DNA Polymerase is a robust formulation of unmodified Taq Polymerase. GoTaq® DNA Polymerase lacks 3’ →5’ exonuclease activity and displays terminal transferase activity that adds a 3′ deoxyadenosine (dA) to product ends. As a result, PCR products amplified using GoTaq® DNA Polymerases (including the GoTaq® Flexi and GoTaq® G2 polymerases) will contain A-overhangs which makes them suitable for T-vector cloning with the pGEM®-T (Cat.# A3600), pGEM®-T Easy (Cat.# A1360) and pTARGET™ (Cat.# A1410) Vectors.

Continue reading “T-Vector Cloning: Questions, Answers and Tips”

Restriction Enzyme Digestion: Capabilities and Resources

Posted on by Promega
Image of someone pipetting while setting up a restriction enzyme digestion

Restriction enzymes recognize short DNA sequences and cleave double-stranded DNA at specific sites within or adjacent to these sequences.  These enzymes are the workhorse in many molecular biology applications such as cloning, RFLP, methylation-specific restriction enzyme analysis of DNA, etc.  Restriction enzymes with enhanced capabilities can help you streamline and shorten these workflows and improve success of restriction enzyme digestion.

A subset of Promega restriction enzymes offer capabilities that  include rapid digestion of DNA in 15 minutes or less, ability to completely digest DNA directly in the GoTaq® Green Master Mix, and Blue/White Cloning Qualification which allows for rapid, reliable detection of transformants.

To learn more about restriction enzymes and applications, check out Restriction Enzyme Resource on the web. The resource provides everything from information on restriction enzyme biology to practical information on how to set up and design a restriction enzyme digestion. This resource also contains useful online tools, including the Restriction Enzyme Tool, to help you use enzymes more effectively. It helps you choose the best reaction buffer for double digests, find the commercially available enzyme that cuts your sequence of interest, find compatible ends, and search for specific information on cut site, overhang isoschizomers and neoschizomers by enzyme name.

For added convenience, you can download the mobile app available for iOS devices and use the Restriction Enzyme Tool to plan your next digest.

For additional information regarding Restriction Enzyme Digest, reference the supplementary video below.

Related Posts

A Quick Method for A Tailing PCR Products

Posted on by Isobel Maciver
PCR experiment and products, pipette tip, tube in researcher's hand.
PCR is a common technique used in research labs to amplify DNA.

Some thermostable DNA polymerases, including Taq, add a single nucleotide base extension to the 3′ end of amplified DNA fragments. These polymerases usually add an adenine, leaving an “A” overhang. There are several approaches to overcome the cloning difficulties presented by the presence of A overhangs on PCR products. One method involves treating the product with Klenow to create a blunt-ended fragment for subcloning. Another choice is to add restriction sites to the ends of your PCR fragments. You can do this by incorporating the desired restriction sites into the PCR primers. After amplification, the PCR product is digested and subcloned into the cloning vector. Take care when using this method, as not all restriction enzymes efficiently cleave at the ends of DNA fragments, and you may not be able to use every restriction enzyme you desire. There is some useful information about cutting with restriction sites close to the end of linear fragments in the Restriction Enzyme Resource Guide. Also, some restriction enzymes require extra bases outside the recognition site, adding further expense to the PCR primers as well as risk of priming to unrelated sequences in the genome.

Continue reading “A Quick Method for A Tailing PCR Products”

Selecting the Right Colony: The Answer is There in Blue and White

Posted on by Kelly Grooms
Agar plate containing colonies important for research, blue and white.
Agar plate containing colonies important for research.

Ah, the wonders and frustrations of cloning. We’ve all been there. After careful planning, you have created the cloned plasmid containing your DNA sequence of interest, transformed it into bacterial cells and carefully spread those cells on a plate to grow. Now you stand at your bench gazing down at your master piece: a plate full of tiny bacterial colonies. Somewhere inside those cells is your DNA sequence, happily replicating with its plasmid host. But wait – logic tells you that not ALL of those colonies can contain your plasmid.  There must be hundreds of colonies. Which ones have your plasmid? You begin to panic. Visions of yourself old and grey and still screening colonies flash through your mind. At the next bench, your lab-mate is cheerfully selecting colonies to screen. Although there are hundreds of colonies on her plate as well, some are white and some are blue. She is only picking the white colonies. What does she know that you don’t?

Continue reading “Selecting the Right Colony: The Answer is There in Blue and White”

Cloning Modified Blunt-ended DNA Fragments into T-Vectors

Posted on by Kelly Grooms

Tailing blunt-ended DNA fragments with TaqDNA Polymerase allows efficient cloning of these fragments into T-Vectors such as the pGEM®-T Vectors. This method also eliminates some of the requirements of conventional blunt-end cloning — Fewer steps, who can argue with that?

Blue/White colony screening helps you pick only the colonies that have your insert.
Blue/White colony screening helps you pick only the colonies that have your insert.

Continue reading “Cloning Modified Blunt-ended DNA Fragments into T-Vectors”

T-Vector Cloning: Answers to Frequently Asked Questions

Posted on by Radhika Ganeshan
Blue/White colony screening helps you pick only the colonies that have your insert.
Blue/White colony screening helps you pick only the colonies that have your insert.

Q: Can PCR products generated with GoTaq® DNA Polymerase be used to for T- vector cloning?

A: Yes. GoTaq® DNA Polymerase is a robust formulation of unmodified Taq Polymerase. GoTaq®DNA Polymerase lacks 3’ →5’ exonuclease activity (proof reading) and also displays non-template–dependent terminal transferase activity that adds a 3′ deoxyadenosine (dA) to product ends. As a result, PCR products amplified using GoTaq® DNA Polymerase will contain A-overhangs which makes it suitable for T-vector cloning.

We have successfully cloned PCR products generated using GoTaq® and GoTaq® Flexi DNA Polymerases into the pGEM®-T (Cat.# A3600), pGEM®-T Easy (Cat.# A1360) and pTARGET™ (Cat.# A1410) Vectors.

Q: Can GoTaq® Long PCR Master Mix be used for T-Vector Cloning?

A: Yes it can. GoTaq® Long PCR Master Mix utilizes recombinant Taq DNA polymerase as well as a small amount of a recombinant proofreading DNA polymerase. This 3´→5´ exonuclease activity (proof reading) enables amplification of long targets. Despite the presence of a small amount of 3´→5´ exonuclease activity, the GoTaq® Long PCR Master Mix generates PCR products that can be successfully ligated into the pGEM®-T Easy Vector System.

We have demonstrated that GoTaq® Long PCR Master Mix successfully generated DNA fragments that could be ligated into pGEM®-T Easy Vector System without an A-tailing procedure, and with ligation efficiencies similar to those observed with the GoTaq® Green Master Mix.

For details refer to Truman, A., Hook, B. and Wieczorek, D. Using GoTaq® Long PCR Master Mix for T-Vector Cloning.

Tip: For cloning blunt-ended PCR fragments into T-vectors, use the A-tailing protocol discussed in the pGEM®-T and pGEM®-T Easy Technical Manual #TM042.

Q: How do I prepare PCR products for ligation? What products can be used to purify the DNA?

Continue reading “T-Vector Cloning: Answers to Frequently Asked Questions”

Cloning Tips for Restriction Enzyme-Digested Vectors and Inserts

Posted on by Sara Klink

Cartoon created and owned by Ed Himelblau
While T-vector cloning is commonly used for PCR-amplified inserts, restriction enzymes still have their uses. For example, you can ensure directional cloning if you digest a vector with the same two enzymes like BamHI and EcoRI that are used to digest your insert. This way, the insert can only be cloned in one direction. However, there are other cloning techniques that can be used to modify the end of vectors and inserts after restriction enzyme digestion and prior to ligation. Continue reading “Cloning Tips for Restriction Enzyme-Digested Vectors and Inserts”

PCR Cloning: Answers to Some Frequently Asked Questions

Posted on by Kelly Grooms

eh1Q: What is the easiest way to clone PCR Products?

A: The simplest way to clone PCR Products is to amplify the product using thermostable polymerases such as Taq, Tfl or Tth polymerase. These polymerases add a single deoxyadenosine to the 3´-end of the amplified products (3´-end overhang), and can be cloned directly into a linearized T-vector.

Q: What if my DNA polymerase has 3´ to 5´ exonuclease activity (i.e., proofreading activity) that removes the 3´-end overhang?

A: To clone PCR products that have been amplified with a polymerase that have proof reading activity into a T-vector, you will need to perform an A-tailing step using Taq DNA polymerase and dATP. Blunt ended restriction digest fragments can also be A-tailed using this method. The method below uses GoTaq Flexi DNA Polymerase (comes with a Mg-free reaction buffer), but any Taq DNA polymerase can be used.

Set up the following reaction in a thin-walled PCR tube:

1–4µl purified blunt-ended DNA fragment (from PCR or restriction enzyme digestion)
2µl of 5X GoTaq Reaction Buffer (Colorless or Green)
2µl of 1mM dATP (0.2mM final concentration)
1µl GoTaq Flexi DNA Polymerase (5u/µl)
0.6µl of 25mM MgCl2 (1.5mM final concentration)
Nuclease-free water to a final volume of 10µl

Incubate at 70°C for 15–30 minutes in a water bath or thermal cycler.

Q: What is a T-vector, and why are they used for cloning PCR products?

A: T vectors are linearized plasmids that have been treated to add T overhangs to match the A overhangs of the PCR product. PCR fragments that contain an A overhang can be directly ligated to these T-tailed plasmid vectors with no need for further enzymatic treatment other than the action of T4 DNA ligase.

For a complete PCR Cloning protocol, Visit the Cloning Chapter of the Promega Protocols and Applications Guide.